Is social “progress” nothing else but a losing deal? In his momentous essay on the Hapsburg Myth in Modern Austrian Literature, Claudio Magris analysed the relation between criticism and loyalty with regards to a foundering empire. The historian Karl Schlögel, on the other hand, reconsiders the disaster in a precise reading of space and time, by tracing history’s legacies. His perspective complements Magris’ view of Central Europe with the melancholy experience of those who were displaced by the dreams and the terror of progress.

Claudio Magris, born in the Italian city of Trieste, is one of Italy’s most important experts on German literature and writers on current cultural matters and one of the best-known literati and essayists in Europe. Up to the time of his retirement as Professor for German Language and Literature at the University of Trieste he supervised translations of many German writing authors, including Joseph Roth, Arthur Schnitzler and Georg Büchner. As an essayist and columnist, he is a frequent contributor to the Corriere della Sera, commenting on domestic and foreign affairs. From 1994 to 1996 he was a member of the Roman Senate, representing the region of Trieste as an independent member of a leftist association. In 2002, along with Umberto Eco and other personalities from the fields of art and culture, he founded the association “Libertà e Giustizia” (Freedom and Justice), in order to take a critical stance towards the politics of Silvio Berlusconi.
He first came to international attention with the publication of his dissertation in 1963 on The Hapsburg Myth in Modern Austrian Literature. His essay Trieste, a European Literary Capital and his book Danube: a sentimental journey from the source to the Black Sea attracted a larger reading public.